Last week, we were asked via Twitter to describe NxTop. Immediately, we thought: “No problem. We can talk about NxTop all day.” Of course, on Twitter, you don’t have all day. You have 140 characters. Here’s what we came up with:

Centralized 1-to-many mgmt of virtual desktops, local execution on bare metal client hypervisor, including laptops

That gives a nice overview of NxTop in just 115 characters. I think the one addition is that NxTop does what it does in a unique way. NxTop separates the main components of a PC: the hardware, the operating systems, user data and applications.

The limit on Twitter was useful to us. Since we can talk about NxTop in detail for as long as you’ll give us, it’s nice to be able to step back and provide a clear, concise overview. Twitter really is the new elevator pitch.

If you have a question for us, you can ask it here on the blog, via Twitter or on our forums. We’d be glad to answer it in 140 characters or less.

Chris Wolf from Burton Group did a nice wrap-up post on the virtualization panel at the Catalyst Europe conference that featured our CEO, Dan McCall.  We were pleased that virtual machine interoperability was a key topic of discussion.  This is an area that is near and dear to us.  Chris highlighted the fact that Citrix has taken steps on the server side to make virtual machines created on XenServer capable of running on Microsoft Hyper-V without conversion.

These types of initiatives are extremely positive in our view, as anything that makes life easier for corporations to deploy virtualization in multi-vendor environments is ultimately good for all of us.  Each virtualization vendor would love to “own” an account, and the customers themselves would likely prefer to standardize on a specific virtualization technology.  However, the reality is that vendor relationships evolve, companies acquire other companies, and IT environments ultimately end up looking a bit more complex than anyone would prefer.

At Virtual Computer, we have been focused on interoperability since day one.  We felt it was necessary to deliver a solution to the marketplace that would interoperate with major virtualization platforms natively without conversions.   We incorporated into our client-optimized bare metal hypervisor full, conversion-free interoperability with Microsoft virtualization technologies such as Hyper-V, Virtual Server, and Virtual PC.  We are also very pleased by the efforts going on in the DMTF and the virtualization industry to define a common interchange format – OVF – that would facilitate interoperability between various virtualization platforms.

Bottom line people should stop obsessing about choosing the “right” virtualization technology – interoperability between platforms removes the angst of the decision.  And at the end of the day virtualization technology is just that - a technology; and what kind of solution one delivers with that technology is what really matters the most.

This week, Burton Group is holding its Catalyst Europe conference in Prague. If you are planning to attend, be sure to check out Chris Wolf’s “Debating the Hypervisor’s Future” panel Tuesday afternoon. Our fearless leader Dan McCall will be joining other virtualization industry thought leaders, such as VMware CTO Steve Herrod and Citrix’s Ian Pratt, to debate the future of hypervisor technology.

It should be a spirited discussion that will likely cover a range of topics such as proprietary versus open source hypervisor approaches and the emergence of the client hypervisor. We are pleased to be have been invited to join the panel and proud of the fact that in less than two months we have gone from stealth company to a unique new voice on the global virtualization industry stage.

There have been a number of really big announcements at VMWorld this week - including the launch of our own NxTop!  A side effect of all the press releases making the round is that there is confusion around what a bare metal hypervisor is and why it is useful, so I thought some clarification would be helpful.

All of the virtualization options on mobile devices up to this point have been “hosted” solutions (sometimes called type-2 hypervisors).  That is, it is a virtual machine running on top of a standard operating system installation - like Windows or Linux.  VMWare ACE and others are examples of type-2 hypervisor solutions.   Also, according to their keynote demo and press release, the VMware vClient initiative is a ‘hosted solution’ of  a Linux operating system and a VMplayer.

NxTop is something different.  It incorporates a ‘Bare Metal’ (type-1) hypervisor. The NxTop engine sits directly on hardware and not on an OS.  Think of ESX vs. Workstation.  This gives you additional management capabilities and security.  For example, if Windows is inoperable (bluescreen, bad patch, etc.) and is not recoverable, NxTop Center still has access to the out-of-band management stack and can revert to a snapshot in a jiffy.  Additionally, the ‘attack surface’ is minimized as you are now talking about under 100k lines of code in a hypervisor vs. millions in a hosted operating system.  Finally, the hypervisor with full control of the hardware is better able to enforce isolation between multiple virtual machines running on the same client.

A hypervisor by itself is not that interesting – but the management and security features it enables are.  Hope this helps clarify the differences between a type 1 hypervisor (bare metal hypervisor) and a type 2 hypervisor (hosted solution).

Our booth at VMWorld has been packed all week long, thanks again for stopping by!